


Under The Stars

by L0NE



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Not A Happy Ending, Stargazing, endgame spoilers, post Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 02:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12471224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L0NE/pseuds/L0NE
Summary: She bites her lip and stares up at the sky, “I’m supposed to be the Ultimate Assassin. I’m supposed to be the most capable, the strongest, but… I’m the only one who knows that I’m the weakest.”





	Under The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR NDRV3!!! PLEASE DON'T READ UNLESS YOU'VE FINISHED!!
> 
> This is under the headcanon that the survivors live together after the events of the game, taking place ~a year later.

When she sits outside under the night sky, she pretends she’s with him.

She takes a blanket with her, goes up to the highest window in the house, and maneuvers her way onto the roof. The first time she did such a thing, Himiko happened to be peeking out of the window and let out the loudest scream she’d ever heard, both of them scaring each other half to death. Now, a few months since then, Himiko knows that when she sees something spider-crawling on the house late at night she shouldn’t be threatening to cast magic at it.

She only goes out when the sky is completely clear, since that’s when the stars are easiest to see. On account of the three of them moving out of Tokyo and onto the countryside per her suggestion, the lack of light pollution made the view unbelievable, no matter how many times she’d seen it. The kind of beautiful you can’t capture in photos or in words, the kind you can’t help but to stare at, mesmerized.

She sets the blanket down on the roof, taking a seat and unknowingly rubbing her arms. It’s getting colder out— she’ll need to get a coat, she realizes. But she doesn’t want to go in, instead, she tears her hand away from her freezing forearm and puts it up to the sky, tracing the constellations she’d come to memorize:

 _Bootes, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor…_ There were a lot out tonight. She produces a notepad from her skirt pocket, flips open to a new page, and jots down the formations she sees. Same as two nights before, and two nights before that, as well. She’s grown used to the familiarity. With the same two people accompanying her during the day, and the same bundles of stars comforting her at night, it’s not such an odd thing to her anymore. It was hard to get used to it, but not anymore.

She hears a noise behind her, and her body stiffens, ready to strike. There are still people after them, obviously. Shuichi is chased down daily by girls who happened to be fans of his, even all the way in the middle of nowhere where they happened to live, and Himiko often worries that without her magical barriers there would be people on them at any second. She’s been no exception to this. Many people want to meet the Ultimate Assassin, after all, including those who want to make business. But she’s always fought them away. Now would be no different…

But just like the stars, the sound becomes familiar to her, and she drops her defensive position.

“Huh, you’re really getting better at this.” His voice chimes in from beside her, sighing as he sits down and his voice gets closer to her, “Sorry, didn’t mean to make so much damn noise. Did I break your concentration?”

“No, you’re fine.” She reassures him, and then she chuckles to herself, something she rarely does anymore, “Are you implying I was ever bad at this?”

She doesn’t look toward him.

He continues. “I mean, when you went to the library to borrow those books on astrology, you looked like you were ready to murder the damn lady for confusing you with all the terminology she used.” He says, and she thought back to that day many moons ago, when she first decided to research on his behalf, to enjoy what he no longer couldn’t. She took home every book of every variety that discussed the scientifics and spotting locations of stars and formations, of the planets and how they came to be, of the history of space and its influence on humanity. Memorizing information is essential to her Ultimate talent— it’s the way one fits in, doesn’t disturb anything until the moment she needs to strike.

She leans back a bit, still looking at the stars, “At least she gave me enough to read. It was interesting, I suppose.” She squints, “Is that… _Corvus_?”

He pauses, then speaks, “Nope. _Crater_. You’re getting the two confused again.”

“‘Again’?”

“The other week, you said the same thing. Peek in your notebook. I had to correct you.”

She flips in her notebook to the time he said, where she sees the word _Corvus_ crossed out several times, then the word _Crater_ written above it. Both are crudely written, and she scowls as she remembers that she really does hate her penmanship.

She raises an eyebrow, “Huh. You did.” Her face falls slightly. Maybe. She isn’t sure.

He laughs, “Don’t feel so bad! They’re pretty close to each other. I can see why you’d get it mixed up.”

There’s a moment of silence between them that she spends logging the rest of what she sees. When she finishes, she slips the notebook back into her pocket, then waits. Waits for him to say something more. Usually he does.

And tonight he does.

“Hey,” He whispers, “I think you need to start wearing a coat when you come up here.” She looks down at her arms and sees goosebumps, and she comes to the realization that he’s right, for once. Damn, it’s really cold.

She shrugs at him, “I’m fine.”

“...The others doing okay?” His voice is still a whisper, and she doesn’t know why. “You don’t mention them much when we talk anymore. You didn’t piss one of them off, did you?”

Her eyes widen, and she scowls, “You know I wouldn’t do that.” She spits, “Shuichi’s grown a backbone, trying to get Team Danganronpa to disassemble since _then_ , but he’s not without annoyances— he’s listened to this same piano song almost every day, something called _Claire de Something or other_. And Himiko’s working on more of her magic, which really means combining some of Tenko’s Neo Aikido skills with her tricks and doing live performances and birthday parties. They’re fine.” She’s not lying when she gives her explanation, though she’s unsure about the “fine” aspect, herself.

He takes it all in, then gets closer to her, “And you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What about you?”

She wants to laugh at him. Maybe punch him. Maybe both. “What do you think?” She asks, spite in her voice. “I’m the only one here without some kind of job. The only one here who can’t cook or clean. The only one who wanted to move to the middle of nowhere. The only one who talks to…” She can’t complete what she wants to say, because she won’t let herself do it. She bites her lip and stares up at the sky, “I’m supposed to be the Ultimate Assassin. I’m supposed to be the most capable, the strongest, but… I’m the only one who knows that I’m the weakest.”

She’s ready to be left alone on the roof, but she’s given a surprise when the conversation continues.

“...You think emotions are weak, don’t you?” He asks, and she remains silent. “I know that’s what you’re really thinking. You get too overwhelmed by your emotions, and you can’t do anything about it.”

She remembers when she tried working at one of the seven convenience store jobs she’d had in the past six months, where she had been fired after seeing a girl wearing a Tsumugi tee and attempted to strangle her. The same could be said of the five fast food cashier jobs she had, one in which she threatened to murder someone who walked in dressed up as Kochiki. Over time, her anger toward Danganronpa as a whole somehow developed into a fear she didn’t know she had until she came to have trouble trusting others around her, lashing out whenever she felt uncomfortable.

Of course, she’d never do any of that around Shuichi or Himiko. She’d never even told them the circumstances behind her job losses, just making up excuses like “They only needed me for a short time”, or “The manager was a creep”. If they find out she’d been causing trouble, who knows how they’ll react to it? The three of them support each other with everything they have, but their “everything” from a mental standpoint is so worn down with pain and sadness that it’s barely enough to support one of them. Certainly not enough for three people.

If any of them have to suffer, she feels like it should be her, just because she doesn’t want them to go through anything else. That’s the price of making friends; you get too attached, and then you worry for them. You _feel_ things for them. She’s grown used to feeling things for others now, but never her own emotions.

He sighs, bringing her back into the moment, “So, you go out to look at the stars whenever you’re feeling upset. I’m the same as you, you know.” He says, and she really doubts that.

She chews on her lip so hard she thinks she’ll draw blood. Knowing she doesn’t want to hear jokes, he continues, “It’s not bad for you to feel upset about everything that’s happened. It doesn’t make you weak. All you need to do is control that a little more. I’m sure you could ask the others for some help— no doubt they can help!”

She doesn’t want to ask for help. That’s more trouble than it’s worth. Shuichi and Himiko have their own problems to deal with, like Shuichi picking up smoking as a way to blow off steam, and Himiko suffering from nightmares almost every night. She doesn’t want to contribute to that. She lets her emotion get the better of her when she’s alone, when she’s around no one she knows.

His voice is so close to her now. She keeps resisting the urge to turn around, but now it’s pulling at her. She thinks about his smile, about his laugh, when they would train, all the things that brought her joy when they were still trapped in that hell. _God_ , sometimes she wants to go back to that time, just to be with him a moment longer, to really confess, to have fun, to maybe even date properly.

And she thinks of his body plummeting toward earth, and she is reminded of reality. She knows she can’t keep this up any longer.

“...you.”

He seems confused. “Hmm?”

She takes a deep breath. “I-I’d…”

She clenches her fists, feeling her face start to burn as she begins to cry, “I-I’d be a lot better at that if I had you.” She stammers.

He remains silent, and she squeezes her eyes shut, some part of her begging herself not to say this, saying things will get worse if she speaks, but she continues, “I miss you so much... It’s just… it’s just not fair, none of it was fair…! I started studying all this stuff about stars just because I… I just wanted to be reminded of you, and…” She puts a hand to her head, gritting her teeth, “I can’t handle any of this... I can’t, I can’t do this, it’s been a year and I can’t take it anymore. Every day, it’s all just too much pain, too many problems, and I can’t tell anyone because we all know how we feel, it’s like pointing out that the sky is blue and the grass is green. I can’t give everyone that burden, and we all know we’re suffering. You were the only thing I loved and you’re...”

Out of frustration, she rips the notebook from her pocket and stands, then hurls the small book into the field in front of their home, “You’re dead... You’re dead, and I still keep clinging to you like an idiot! I’m just like you were!” She yells, wiping at her eyes.

He still doesn’t speak.

She whips her head back, glaring, “I’m the only one here who talks to a fucking voice in my head every night! I’m the only one here that can’t move on properly, dammit! Everyone else can do something but me, I…!”

With that final action, her eyes lock with the roof’s tiling, and she sees that he was never there to begin with.

It was why she was so reluctant to turn around, no matter how much she wanted to embrace him. This happens every time, whenever she thinks it’s him, it’s nothing, just something she fabricated. Every time she goes up on the roof to relax, it happens. It never ends with such an outburst on her end, but today was different. Today, she showed her true colors.

She hates them.

Her heart swells like a balloon and bursts all at once.

She crumples down onto the blanket, sobbing, banging her fist against the hard roof. She knows none of it matters— Shuichi’s out late tonight and Himiko sleeps in the basement. She can make all the damn noise she wants, and she does. Sobbing turns into cursing which turns into pleading which turns into more sobbing. Again and again like a never ending cycle.

She punches at the roof until her knuckles are so bloody she can’t feel them anymore, the skin raw from the damage and the cold. She wants to keep pushing herself, but her shirt and skirt are getting dirtied, and she doesn’t want to explain any of that on laundry day. She grabs her hair and pulls at it, her long fingernails scratching her scalp, but she welcomes the pain, welcomes the familiar feeling, that familiar feeling of _despair_. Every day was _despair_. Losing him was _despair_. Life was _despair_.

 _It’s all despair_.

She slams her fist into the roof one last time, letting out a scream of anger, “YOU’RE THE REASON I CAN’T CONTROL MYSELF, YOU IDIOT! DON’T GO LECTURING ME…!”

Only silence.

Panting, she draws her fist back and shakes off the blood.

She wonders if he can hear her, wherever he is.

She curls up on the blanket, shivering out of anger, sadness, even lack of heat.

 

 

“Kaito...”

 

 

It's so cold.

 

 

"I miss you, you idiot..."

 

 

It's always cold.

 

 

When she sits outside under the night sky, she pretends she’s with him, but she knows it’s all pretend, and just that.

 

 

Only the stars are witness to Maki's pain.

 


End file.
